My daughter stood in the glowing doorway of Ben’s bedroom, her eyes wild, her face pale. She held a lamp in her hand. Her gaze fixed on Sister, the horrifying sight of her, and I knew she felt the cold and she heard the clicking, heard Sister’s icy breath. No one but me had ever seen Sister in the flesh.
Lisette stared, and I watched her jaw set. Her arm drew back. Then she threw the lamp at Sister so hard it smashed against the wall.
40
Vail
I went to bed in my clothes. Instinct, probably, because something must be up. Anne Whitten wasn’t going to stay this quiet.
Since I didn’t expect to sleep, I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling, my hands laced behind my head. Did I think about Charlotte? Maybe a little. The kiss she’d given me had faded to the periphery, but I thought about her story of the little girl and the mailman. I understood now why she’d told that story. Mostly, I hoped that Charlotte had gotten out of town all right, and that she’d kept driving until she was as far away as she could get.
There was a soft murmur of voices from Violet’s room, and then silence.
—
When I woke, I was curled on my side and a warm body was climbing into bed with me, sweet-smelling and achingly familiar. I curled around my little brother and gathered him close, digging my nose into his warm skin at the collar of his pajamas.
“Ben,” I said.
He squirmed to get comfortable. I heard him breathing, felt the rise and fall of it.
“It’s okay, Vail,” he said.
He’d said this because I was crying, my tears soaking soundlessly into the cotton of his pajamas.
“No, it isn’t,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.” His voice was truly Ben’s. His palm patted the back of my hand, and I knew that he was truly my little brother, even though that wasn’t possible, even though Ben hadn’t really been Ben. Or maybe he had. It didn’t fucking matter.
“I failed you,” I choked out.
“I was hiding,” he said. “I came back for you, but I had to leave, so I’m sorry, too. I didn’t want to go, but I can’t stay.”
“Please,” I begged him. “Please stay. I’ll do anything. Please.”
There was no reply, and I sobbed into his neck. Because we both knew the answer.
How was his skin so warm? Was I crazy? His hair tickled my face. He breathed evenly, in and out, and I counted each breath like a prayer. It didn’t matter who he was, who I was, where we were, or what year it was. It didn’t matter where we had been or where we were going. It only mattered that he was my brother. I held him tight for as long as I could.
When he was gone again, it felt like my chest had ripped open, like my guts were spilled on the floor. I lay exhausted, still smelling his scent. And then a familiar white light came on above me, glaring down over the bed.
“Wake up,” a voice said.
I’d researched sleep paralysis, and I knew what it was supposed to feel like. I tried to flex my hand on the blanket, but nothing happened. Sleep paralysis, but I wasn’t asleep at all.
“Wake up,” the voice said again. A woman’s voice in a harsh whisper, excited. The same voice that had spoken those words to me before I hit the thing with a vase.
Somehow, I moved. I was in a dream state, myself but not myself. I wasn’t moving my own body, onto my back to look up, and when I spoke, it wasn’t words that I planned to speak.
“Annie?” I said. “What is it?”
The figure above me wasn’t an alien. The light wasn’t light from a UFO. It was a woman of about twenty, her hair pulled back and her face a pale moon. I had the feeling that I had heard her screaming only a few hours ago, heard her walking toward me down the hall, but right now she was just a woman. In her hand she held a lamp with a glass cylinder, and the light it gave off was weak and yellow, not blinding white light at all.
“Wake up,” she said again. “And don’t call me Annie.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ll remember next time.”
“Fine. Now get up. I want to show you something.”
